Customizing the Software on EC2 Instances Running Linux

packages: 
  <name of package manager>:
    <package name>: <version> 

AWS Elastic Beanstalk currently supports the following package managers: apt, yum, rubygems, python (easy_install), and rpm. Packages are processed in the following order: rpm, yum/apt, and then rubygems and python. There is no ordering between rubygems and python, and packages within each package manager are not guaranteed to be installed in any order.

Within each package manager, each package is specified as a package name and a list of versions. The version can be a string, a list of versions, or an empty string or list. An empty string or list indicates that you want the latest version. For rpm manager, the version is specified as a path to a file on disk or a URL. Relative paths are not supported.

If you specify a version of a package, AWS Elastic Beanstalk attempts to install that version even if a newer version of the package is already installed on the instance. If a newer version is already installed, the deployment fails. Some package managers support multiple versions, but others may not. Please check the documentation for your package manager for more information. If you do not specify a version and a version of the package is already installed, AWS Elastic Beanstalk does not install a new version—it assumes that you want to keep and use the existing version.

The following snippet specifies a version URL for rpm, requests the latest version from yum and apt, and version 0.10.2 of chef from rubygems.

packages: 
  yum:
    libmemcached: [] 
    ruby-devel: []
    gcc: []
  rpm:
    epel: http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm
  rubygems: 
    chef: '0.10.2'
  apt:
    mysql-client: []

sources:  
  <target directory>: <location of archive file>

Supported formats are tar, tar+gzip, tar+bz2, and zip. You can reference external locations such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) (e.g., http://s3.amazonaws.com/mybucket/myobject).

The following example downloads a .zip file from an Amazon S3 bucket and unpacks it into /etc/myapp:

sources:  
  /etc/myapp: http://s3.amazonaws.com/mybucket/myobject 

files:  
  "<target file location on disk>": 
     mode: "<six-digit octal value>"
     owner: <name of owning user for file>
     group: <name of owning group for file>
     source: <URL>
     authentication: <authentication name>:
						
  "<target file location on disk>": 
     mode: "<six-digit octal value>"
     owner: <name of owning user for file>
     group: <name of owning group for file>
     content: |
	   this is my content
     encoding: encoding format
     authentication: <authentication name>:   

files:
  “/home/ec2-user/myfile” :
    mode: "000777"
    owner: ec2-user
    group: ec2-user
    source: http://foo.bar/myfile
 
  “/home/ec2-user/myfile2” :
    mode: “000777”
    owner: ec2-user
    group: ec2-user
    content: |
      # this is my file
      # with content

Example using a symlink. This creates a link /tmp/myfile2.txt that points at the existing file /tmp/myfile1.txt.

files:
  “/tmp/myfile2.txt” :
    mode: "120400"
    content: “/tmp/myfile1.txt”

users:
  <name of user>:
    groups:
      - <name of group>
    uid: "<id of the user>"
    homeDir: “<user's home directory>"

Users are created as noninteractive system users with a shell of /sbin/nologin. This is by design and cannot be modified.

users:
  myuser:
    groups:
      - group1
      - group2
    uid: "50"
    homeDir: “/tmp”

groups:
  <name of group>:
  <name of group>:
    gid: "<group id>"

The following snippet specifies a group named groupOne without assigning a group ID and a group named groupTwo that specified a group ID value of 45.

groups:
  groupOne:
  groupTwo:
    gid: "45"

commands:
  test_command: 
    command: <command to run>
    cwd: <working directory>
    env: 
      <variable name>: <variable value>
    ignoreErrors: true

The following example snippet runs a python script.

commands:
  test: 
    command: myscript.py
    cwd: /home/ec2-user
    env: 
      myvarname: myvarvalue

container_commands:
 <name of container_command>:
    command: <command to run>
    leader_only: true
 <name of container_command>:
    command: <command to run>

The following is an example snippet.

container_commands:
  collectstatic:
    command: "django-admin.py collectstatic --noinput"
  01syncdb:
    command: "django-admin.py syncdb --noinput"
    leader_only: true
  02migrate:
    command: "django-admin.py migrate"
    leader_only: true
  99customize:
    command: "scripts/customize.sh"

services: 
  sysvinit:
    <name of service>:
      enabled: true
      ensureRunning: true
      files: "<file name>"
      sources: "<directory>"	
      packages: 
        <name of package manager>:
          <package name>: <version>
      commands: 
        <name of command>:

The following table lists the supported keys.

The following is an example snippet:

services: 
  sysvinit:
    myservice:
      enabled: true
      ensureRunning: true

option_settings:
  - namespace:  <namespace>
    option_name:  <option name>
    value:  <option value>
  - option_name:  <option name>
    value:  <option value>

The folllowing is an example snippet.

option_settings:
  - namespace:  aws:elasticbeanstalk:container:tomcat:jvmoptions
    option_name:  Xmx
    value:  256m
  - option_name: myparam1
    value: somevalue

The parameters specified in the option_settings section of the configuration file are passed in as environment variables to the EC2 instances. For coding examples, see the following sections: